You don’t have to go back too far to find a mostly homegrown Giants’ Opening Day lineup. In 2022, Joey Bart, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and Steven Duggar were all starting, with Logan Webb on the mound.
But what about a young mostly homegrown lineup? If you define “young” as any player under 30, the 2016 Giants have you covered. The entire infield (plus the catcher) was under 30 and homegrown. The Giants had the best record in baseball for the first half of the season with their help, and while I’m not sure what happened after that, I’m sure it was incredible and sustainable.
This comes up now because the 2025 Giants might have an Opening Day lineup with several young, homegrown players, if not a majority. Patrick Bailey and Jung Hoo Lee seem like virtual locks to repeat as Opening Day starters, and there are three young players who have a great chance to join them.
This is a look at those three players and the seasons that have either earned them an Opening Day start or put them in the conversation for one.
To become a middle of the lineup mainstay, Heliot Ramos needs to stay in the strike zone
Nobody flips their bat on a walk quite like Ramos. He does it for an organic, relatable reason, too: He’s been working hard to stay in the strike zone. He doesn’t view a walk as a pitcher’s failure. He, rightly, sees it as his success. He worked hard for that walk, and he chucks the bat behind him, as if to let the bat have some fun after it wasn’t needed.
He’ll need to keep doing that if he wants to be a star.
If he wants to be a valuable player for a long time? He can keep on doing what he’s doing, give or take. Ramos seems likely to be in the middle of the order next season, and he has a great chance to be the left fielder of the future, giving the Giants the best chance since it started at breaking the Curse of Barry Bonds.
But if there’s something that can prevent him from breaking that curse, it’s going outside of the strike zone. Since coming back from a deserved All-Star nod, he’s hit .230/.264/.403 in 50 second-half games. He had a league-average chase rate in his first two months, but he’s been chasing more pitches outside of the strike zone in the second half. Some hitters can still do damage on pitches out of the zone. Ramos might not be one of them. From Baseball Savant, here’s a look at Ramos’ wOBA in different parts of the strike zone:
Compare this chart with, say, Aaron Judge’s or Shohei Ohtani’s. They’ll have hot zones and cold zones — and they won’t stay in the same spots year after year — but they’ll still do damage on pitches outside of the zone. Ramos, to this point, has not. Throw it in the zone, and the pitcher will pay. Throw it out of the zone, and maybe he won’t?
The good news, if not the best news, is that Ramos clearly has enough going for him to have a nice career even without pitch-perfect plate discipline. He hits the ball harder than 80 percent of his peers. His bat speed is better than 90 percent of his peers. He has enough opposite-field power to do things that have never, ever been done before.
Is Ramos a solid regular, or is he a star? It might be years before we know for sure, but if it happens, the strike zone will be the difference.
Tyler Fitzgerald should definitely start … somewhere
Speaking of supremely athletic players with a lot of swing and miss, here’s the most fascinating question of the offseason, other than all the rest of them: Is Tyler Fitzgerald the starting shortstop on Opening Day?
“Yes,” you scream. “Don’t be a fool.”
You’re probably right. This doesn’t have to be complicated. When it comes to wOBA, there’s only one shortstop ahead of Fitzgerald, and he might win the American League MVP. The shortstop right underneath Fitzgerald on the wOBA rankings is Mookie Betts.
When it comes to the numbers under the hood, though, there are still questions. Fitzgerald is the anti-Ramos when it comes to things like exit velocity and bat speed. He’s definitely the anti-Ramos when it comes to going the other way; his spray chart is comically lopsided, with just a couple of opposite-field hits even approaching the warning track in the typical ballpark.
It’s possible to thrive with some or all of these attributes, but it’s not nothing that Fitzgerald’s expected slash line is .241/.304/.399 based on how the ball has come off his bat. That’s a fine line for a shortstop, especially one with speed. It’s not nearly as impressive as his actual .291/.344/.520 line, though, which is the line of a perennial All-Star shortstop.
The answer is that Fitzgerald should obviously be an outsized part of the 2025 Giants’ plans. He should get 500 at-bats, and he’ll help the team throughout the season. But if you’re looking at him as the long-term answer at shortstop, that kind of sells him short, pun intended. This is because he’s a solid defender at short, but his arm is better suited to second. It’s the kind of arm that sticks at short when a player has hit the snot out of the ball for several years and has the RE2PECT of your peers.
If the Giants can’t find an obvious upgrade at short — and they probably won’t — there is zero problem with plonking Fitzgerald down there and letting him be. There’s a possible future, though, where he’s hitting a little worse than that expected slash line up there. If his defense is just OK, the team and the fans will start to get antsy.
A move to second isn’t necessary, and as of right now, it’s far from desirable. But if the right shortstop should happen to amble down King Street, the Giants should pounce. Fitzgerald seems like an obvious starter, but don’t chisel his position into concrete just yet.
Grant McCray will need to keep hitting for power if he wants to be an everyday player
When Baseball Prospectus runs a million Monte Carlo simulations for their projections next year, there’s going to be one where the Giants strike out 2,000 times and lead the league in runs scored. There’s going to be another one where they set an all-time record for team strikeouts and finish 30th in runs scored. So it goes for a team that might be counting on three of the whiffiest and most fascinating youngsters they’ve had in a long time.
McCray was a middling year away from getting left unprotected in the Rule 5 Draft again, but he still has youth and obvious physical talent on his side. When Fitzgerald was the same age, he was posting similar numbers in High A to the ones that McCray is posting in the majors right now. I’m bullish on both of them, but it’s much more enviable to be a 23-year-old doing fun things in the majors.
At the risk of reading too much into a tiny sample, though, McCray’s defense is at least a tier below Brendan Doyle, Jacob Young and José Siri, at least for now. He’s currently not a threat to win a Platinum Glove. With more innings as a major-league center fielder, sure, but he isn’t currently a player who can hit .200/.290/.350 and still be worth a few WAR because of the runs he’s saving.
As of this writing, McCray is hitting .237/.280/.466, and that would work as a long-term solution in center. That would work just fine. It’s not the line of a player who gets 10th-place MVP votes, but it’s the line of a player who helps an awful lot if he runs and fields as well as McCray does. Those extra dingers are the difference.
I’m not sure what McCray’s status is on Opening Day 2025, though. The Giants have a lot invested in Lee, and he has a ceiling that’s worth chasing. Ramos is the obvious left fielder. McCray definitely has the arm for right, but that can’t possibly be the best place for him.
There’s time to figure this all out, possibly with a left-to-right arrangement of Lee, McCray and Ramos making the most sense. Until then, McCray hitting for as much power as he already has will make things easier for everyone.
(Photo of Fitzgerald and Ramos: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
